
■ ■77 X 
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS \ 



III; Hill llllliill lllilillliliilllllli 
013 701 511 



HoUinger 

pH8.5 

Mill Run F3-1955 




HON. MONTGOMERY BLAIR, 



PdSTMASTEK-HENERAL DURING PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S 



ADMINISTRATION. 



MAJ.-GEN. FITZ JOHN PORTER. 



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To MAJ.-GEN. FITZ JOHN PORTER, 

Jlorrisfown, N. J. 

Washington, January 26, 1874. 
Dear General : 

You ask me what can be done to get your case reviewed 
by this Administration. Nothing that I know of. They 
probably see some trouble, and no political advantage in it, 
and will let it alone. You can get all you really want — the 
vindication, if any is yet needed, of your good name in the 
minds of the people, by getting able and distinguished 
lawyers, who command the public confidence, to review 
the record and pronounce their judgment on it. Judge 
Curtis, and Daniel Lord, and Keverdy Johnson, and 
others, have given you their clear and positive 
opinion. I have no doubt Mr. Evarts, and Mr. O'Con- 
nor, and Mr. Bartlett, and Judge Black would give 
you the same opinion. These are among the great lawyers 
of the day. Men of their stamp would not refuse to do 
justice to a true soldier suffering under great wrong. No 
man of sense will regard against their judgment, the finding 
of all the courts martial or commissions or boards that 
ever were packed. I do not mean to disparage military 
courts fairly constituted. But the same securities against 
prejudice, bias and interest are required in them as in all 
tribunals. 

Undoubtedly you are entiiled to a hearing by the Presi- 
dent. You are under a sentence of disqualification which is 
still in force, and course of execution. If it were an executed 



sentence he might say it was final in law, and rid himself of 
it in that way. But as the case is, I conceive it to be his clear 
duty, on an application to the pardoning power, with show of 
probable cause, to look into it, and if he finds the sentence 
unjust to issue his pardon. Of course you do not want his 
pardon, and would refuse to accept it unless he puts it on 
the ground of your innocence. But your application does 
not lie only to the pardoning power. Many precedents and 
a positive statute indicate a more complete remedy, in such 
case of gross injustice. The President may restore you 
with consent of the Senate. Undoubtedly it is his duty, if 
public justice requires it. It is not a mere matter of Ex- 
ecutive favor. 

I do not see how he can refuse to declare his judgment 
of your entire innocence, if he will examine the new evidence. 
It is largely evidence from the side of the enemy which 
vou could not procure during the war. It refutes utterly 
the conjectural findings of the court Martial. You are as 
much entitled to this evidence as Bazaine was to the testi- 
mony of the German princes and generals. I do not say 
that this new evidence is necessary to your vindication. I 
believe with Judge Curtis, and Mr. Johnson, and Mr. Lord, 
that you are entitled to a full and honorable acquittal on 
the evidence at the trial ; but the new evidence leaves no 
peg to hang a doubt on. No Judge Advocate (who has his 
own character to take care of) will assert your guilt in the 
face of such evidence. 

The public, I think, will now look at your case fairly, 
and no longer through a glass, darkly, of partj^ feeling. 
When they tried you, the War Department wanted to ex- 
cuse Pope's defeat, and their share of the business. 
That honest and able man, Secretary Welles, in 
his defence of Mr. Lincoln, tells how Stanton met 
the emergency. He charged the blame on McClellan. 
He demanded of Mr. Lincoln his instant dismissal. 
He tried to engage the whole Cabinet in it. He tried 
to get them all to sign a paper drawn by him to compel 



3 

Mr. Lincoln's consent. But Mr. Lincoln thought McClellan 
only could rail}- the army and he went to him and asked 
him to resume the command. That put a check on the 
business till McClellan was finally removed ; and then the 
charges were worked up against you. The prosecution 
went on the ground that " the army of Virginia" (Pope's 
army), which got in behind the defences of Washington, 
"had nobly performed the arduous and perilous work com- 
mitted to it. Its campaign was marked by signal vigor and 
ability." And if you had made " a vigorous attack" the 
" rebels would have been overthrown " and " Jackson's 
army " (neither within your reach, nor in the habit of beiug 
captured and destroyed, unfortunately for us) destroyed or 
captured;" and that, for "the escape of that army," and the 
" calamities and untold grief of our people," in the 
ensuing years of the war, you were chargeable. 
There was not one word of- trutli^ in all this. 
It had scarcely any color from the evidence at 
the trial. And now the new evidence sweeps away the 
whole ground of it. Still I fear that neither the j^arty as a 
whole, nor the administration will take trouble to do you 
justice, although you have the testimony of a personal 
and political friend of President Lincoln that at the time of 
his death he purposed a re-hearing of your case, by which 
evidence non-attainable during hostility, might be adduced 
to your favor ; an act so like his just and generous nature._ 

And although you have had the corditil assistance 
of President Fillmore and other persons of high 
official position, repeatedly declaring your sentence 
an unjust one ; and although you have had presented 
the opinion of General Sherman that you could " with pro- 
priety petition the President to review your case — to remit 
so much of the sentence as prevents you from holding of- 
fice, and to nominate you fpr some position, the same or 
similar as that held by you in the regular army at the time 
you were dismissed;" — 

And although you have in your possession, with which 



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4 

to ever command the attention and respect of the patriotic 
people of the country, the assurance of that great soldier, 
General George H. Thomas, that " he could safely assert 
that not one of your old army friends believed for one mo- 
ment that the finding of the Court was just — and that it 
was universally believed that the Court had been misled;" — 

And although Vice-President Wilson and Horace Gree- 
ley, and Governor Curtin, and Senators Sherman, Foster 
and Harris, with many other distinguished leaders 
of the Administration" party have recommended to 
the President the revision you ask for, still I fear your case 
must ivaii. 

One false argument has been used against you with the 
public — that you disobeyed order.-, and " disobedience of 
orders" with or without serious consequences, is a military 
crime that justifies the sentence. Now the public do not 
know that the first part of this proposition is not true in 
fact, and the second is not military law. Disobedience of 
orders, according to the motive and circumstances, is an 
offence of the highest or lowest grade. It may deserve 
death or a simple reprimand. In small matters and with- 
out wrong intention, it is not to be regarded seriously. To 
be a serious offence in any case, it must be positive 
and wilful. If it proceed from misconceptioj, from 
honest motives, from sincere sense of duty, it may 
be proof of incapacity, but is no crime. Eveii the 
best officers may have to plead such excuses. Military life 
gives frequent occasion for them. " No commander," a 
great historian tells us, was " so indulgent to such errors " 
as the great Napoleon : and " no master was so faithfully 
served." Even when Grouchy failed him at Waterloo, 
though he thought it as " strange as if an earthquake had 
met his army and swallowed it up," he was still just and 
generous enough finally to doubt whether " it was treachery 
or onl}' misfortune." It is established that you were not 
amenable to either charge. 

In regard to the obligation of orders and " blind obe- 



dieiice " to them, the same great master of war has incul- 
cated that absokite, unreasoning, bhnd obedience is only 
due wlien the commander who gives the order is present. 
If he be absent, and the subordinate is clear that the order 
was made in ignorance and error of the situation, and that 
the commander if present would not make it, he is allowed 
to exercise his own best judgment as to the execution of it. 
A grave responsibility of course devolves on him. A sel- 
tisli, stupid man, may say the order is positive — let the 
blame be on him who gave it ; but that is not the sugges- 
tion of a high and true sense of public duty. 

In your case, orders which you were convicted of diso- 
beying you were relieved and discharged from in express 
terms. The first or joint order to General McDowell and 
yourself — annulled by McDowell's word aud act — directed 
" it should not be carried out if any considerable advan- 
tages were to be gained by departing from it," and this dis- 
cretion was availed of by you all that day to successfully 
keep Lee from throwing all his forces on Pope's scattered 
army. The other, or last order — known as the 4:3() P. M. 
order — even if it had not arrived too late for execution, di- 
rected you to advance on the exposed flank of Jackson's 
army. It was not Jackson's flank before you, but Lee 
and Longstreet in overwhelming force. The prosecution 
refused to believe that on the trial. They know it now. 
But you knew at the time what Pope did not know. If 
you had sacrificed your corps, you could not have pleaded 
the order for it. Orders must be obeyed in good faith : 
the letter will not justify any act in fraud of the true intent 
aud spirit. General McClellan asserts, and distinguished 
officers coincide in the opinion, that you acted with 
excellent judgment and ability in the case. It is clear 
there was no technical disobedience of orders. 

You will, when you get an honest hearing, have the trial 
set aside as null and void. The artifice of making a staff 
officer sign the charges in lieu of the military commander 
to evade the law, which only allows a court to be appointed 



and detailed by the President in such a case as yours, is 
a fetch and contrivance of no validity inlaw. The Court de- 
tailed by General Halleck for Mr. Stanton was in law no 
court, and there has been no trial, and there is no legal 
verdict or sentence against you. But this is not what you 
want. You want the truth brought out and vindicated. 
You want an investigation on the merits and the evidence ; 
and this I think you will not get at this time. That you 
Avill get it one day T have not the least doubt. I believe 
the truth will always prevail in the end. 

It is no new thing to sacrifice a soldier to serve a politi- 
cal turn. Byng's case is one of those which are the oppro- 
brium of "military justice." No historian, no writer of any 
party in England defends it. Yet at the time no man of 
his part}^ except Pitt, had the brave and honest heart 
to remonstrate with the bigot King against that 
shameful murder. The like iniquity was attempted against 
Admiral Keppel— " one of the greatest and best men of his 
age," says the greatest of English writers, and "to the eter- 
nal disgrace of the nation " — with likelihood of success but 
for the popular outcry. Public justice will yet come to 
your rescue. 

Yours trul}', 

MONTGOMEEY BLAIK. 



-.ss 

11 III 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS ^ 



f)13 701 511 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




0013701 511 



HoUinger 

pH8.5 

Mill Run F3-1955 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



0013701 511 




HoUinger 

pH8.5 

Mill Run F3-1955 



